


Love Turns To

by variative



Category: Star Wars Legends: Republic Commando Series - Karen Traviss
Genre: Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Incest, M/M, Personal Growth, Post-Canon, Rage, Unhealthy Relationships, if that's a term that even applies in the star wars eu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 13:04:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17746430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/variative/pseuds/variative
Summary: The clean, immediate anger of needing to go behind the backs of Kal and everyone else in the house, knowing that he and Jaing would never be loved or tolerated or even understood if they were discovered, was so much easier to bear than that black, consuming despair. It was so easy that Kom’rk forgot to look at anything else.





	Love Turns To

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a nasty little piece of something I felt primally compelled to put to words. It's probably something along the lines of "Two Year Old," in terms of the sheer severity of fucked up Null dynamics. The 'incest' tag up there does not mean cloneshipping, y'all.

When Kom’rk was alone, really truly alone without space for pragmatism or distractions, when he was in his head and feeling philosophical, he looked himself and at the universe and saw something broken. 

He tried not to look too much, swallowed it down. He smiled, he lied with his eyes and the easy set of his shoulders. He let it out small. Looked away when Kal was talking. Was a little too easy to read, just enough to see the hurt and not the hate. It was preferable if the people around him saw the wound and not the claws—saw the open sores where his gauntlets didn’t fit right, where the longnecks liked to let their stun batons land, where a rock got under the flight suit and chafed and chafed, an excuse at every age so that nobody had to wonder and nobody would ever look to close and see him worrying at the raw flesh with his teeth, salt and copper and skin on his tongue in the dark. 

Kom’rk was very calm, letting the poison in, bleeding himself out, balancing on the knife's edge, and no one ever saw it. No one except for Jaing.

Kom’rk thought of them as a pair of black holes, circling around each other in some kind of sucking equilibrium, equivalent and balanced in their destruction. With Jaing, Kom’rk never had to pretend that things weren’t fucked up and broken, that he wasn’t fucked up, and broken, and monstrous. Being with Jaing, it let him sink into his head, into the hot satisfying anger, into the relief of letting it all rise to the surface in front of someone who knew him better than the whole rest of the galaxy and who understood. Being with Jaing was monstrous too, and Kom’rk liked that. He needed that, that it matched. And it wasn’t just him, they both needed it, there was no lying about that. 

The best times were when Kom’rk held Jaing down and licked sweat from his too-familiar nape, bit him, wrapped bruises in the shape of his fingers around Jaing’s wrists. He made Jaing beg and knew just how to do it, made him cry out in pleasure-pain, had him however Kom’rk liked. Jaing needed it for his own reasons, and Kom’rk knew that. Jaing needed to be had and hurt, and to not be forsaken, after: the Kaminiise had forsaken him, the Jedi and the Republic, and Jango and Kal had too, but not Kom’rk, never Kom’rk. He was the only one Jaing could trust. He knew Jaing and needed too, or maybe it was just the rage and the hurt that needed to hold something precious and fragile in his hands and crush it to pieces. 

Kom’rk was careful, though, to never let the anger go too far. He always put Jaing back together again.

They needed other things too, though, things that hurt long after the hot wracking shame of knowing Jaing like Kom’rk did had worn thin. Sometimes, it was slow—but never gentle, never that, they could never pretend around each other. Even when it was slow it was savage. It hurt the worst like that. Kom’rk would pin Jaing down and take him slowly, lingeringly, with his hands tight enough on Jaing’s body to bruise. He would say things to Jaing and do things to Jaing that came out of some black pit inside Kom’rk, words about knowing and belonging to and being owned, owned, owned all the way down deep, actions to match. After, Kom’rk always pulled Jaing close to him and tried not to let his hands tremble when he stroked Jaing’s hair, and Jaing’s expression was always shocked and raw and a little scared, cracked open to expose all of his soft places. Then he could be gentle to Jaing, and Jaing could let the hurt be pulled up to the surface, where Kom’rk’s lived during those times. They would lie together, trembling, humming at the same frequency.

Kom’rk’s biggest mistake was letting himself hope that his brother would bring an end to the storm of his anger, and when they were closed in at Kyrimorut for years Jaing was all that kept Kom’rk sane. He’d been so stupid, he’d never thought that getting out would make it alright, that an antiquated homestead in the middle of a strange forest would be the one thing that could soothe the hurt thing inside him. But apparently he had thought that, somewhere deeper inside than Kom’rk could see. Jaing was all that kept him at equilibrium, as the years passed and slowly Kom’rk bowed underneath the understanding that he had wanted Kyrimorut to heal him, and it could not. The clean, immediate anger of needing to go behind the backs of Kal and everyone else in the house, knowing that he and Jaing would never be loved or tolerated or even understood if they were discovered, was so much easier to bear than that black, consuming despair. It was so easy that Kom’rk forgot to look at anything else.

###

And so, it was a stark, painful surprise when Kom’rk moved to kiss Jaing, one day, and Jaing flinched.

Kom’rk breathed out, stepped back, waited.

“Kom’rk,” Jaing said finally, quiet and unhappy, twisting his fingers together. He wasn’t wearing his gloves, Kom’rk realized, a second lesser shock. Jaing breathed in and out and then cut his eyes up at Kom’rk and said, almost defiant, “I don’t want to anymore.”

There was nothing Kom’rk could say to that, nothing that wouldn’t be more cruel and awful than anything else he had ever done to Jaing, that wouldn’t lay Kom’rk more bare than he could ever stand to be. Jaing had always known that what they were doing was wrong and sick. Kom’rk, on the other hand, had learned it after the fact, long after the desire for Jaing had become inextricably tangled in him, deep taproots growing all the way through his core. They’d been kids when it started, when Kom’rk had wanted Jaing in some furious way he had been too young to understand, and as he’d grown up his sexuality had grown around it. When he learned desire and lust and the ways to satisfy them, he had thought it was just a new growth on the same tree, a new natural consequence of his obsession. For Kom’rk the desire had come first, and then, long after, the action, and nothing in his life had ever been clean or pure or good, so he had never had anything to compare either to.

“Did you ever?” Kom’rk asked, mildly, crossing his arms over his chest. The sore on his wrist chafed painfully against the seam of his shirt cuff, and it calmed him a little, kept him.

Jaing swallowed and looked down. “I love you,” he said. “Ner vod—I always loved you.”

Kom’rk could read the answer there, but he waited, stringing out the silence until Jaing couldn’t take it anymore and filled it. 

“I—I don’t feel clean,” Jaing said, hoarse and ashamed. “It used to be alright but it’s not anymore, Kom’ika, I… I don’t feel…”

“You feel broken,” Kom’rk supplied, raising a brow. “Like I am.”

“You aren’t broken,” Jaing said softly. “You’re just angry. And I am too, but hurting ourselves doesn’t make me feel better about it anymore. I want to change,” he said, and rubbed quickly at his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I don’t care if you want to change,” Kom’rk said, and waited until Jaing had looked up at him in confusion to unfold his arms and move closer. “You’ve gone soft, but I haven’t. You’re weak, Jaing, you always were. Some things don’t change. Some things don’t _get_ to change.”

He had Jaing backed against the desk now, recoiling from Kom’rk as he moved in, closing the distance between them. Their foreheads were touching and Jaing’s breath was light and fast on Kom’rk’s cheek. “I don’t care if you feel clean,” Kom’rk murmured, his voice coming out tenderly, tenderly, “Because I am broken, and I will never be fixed, and you’re the same. I’m just strong enough that I don’t try to pretend otherwise.”

“No,” Jaing snarled, but his mouth opened under Kom’rk’s easily despite the protest. Jaing made a small noise, of pain, Kom’rk thought, and he kissed Jaing gentler for it, easing his brother’s mouth open.

Jaing was loose in Kom’rk’s embrace. It was easy to shift him up, hitch him up onto the desk and press between his legs. At that new angle Jaing was taller, bowed over Kom’rk, tipped down to his mouth like a flower to the sun.

“You’re beautiful,” Kom’rk mumbled, nosing at Jaing’s neck when his head dropped onto Kom’rk’s shoulder. “The way you are is beautiful.”

“It’s not,” Jaing moaned, childish with misery, rolling his head back and forth. “It’s not. I don’t want to hurt anymore.”

“It’s good for you,” Kom’rk scolded, tasting the words of the longnecks in his mouth, and rubbed Jaing’s thighs, kneading his thumbs into the heavy muscle. Jaing was hard, the front of his pants pushing out, toward Kom’rk. Needing him, wanting him, always.

“Why can’t you just be my brother? I just want you to be my brother,” Jaing said, pleading, not something he had learned as a child.

“I am your brother,” Kom’rk said. He had to swallow past the tightness in his throat to get the words out. “Don’t cry, Ja’ika.”

“I don’t want you to hurt me.” Every word sounded dragged out of Jaing’s throat, dripping wet. Weakness, weakness, when on Kamino Jaing had shone like tempered steel against the endless white walls and had been clever and strong and never gave, who had squeezed Kom’rk’s hand and told him, _don’t cry, okay? Don’t let them win;_ when during the war Jaing had been as fast and savage as a bullwhip, and never lingered even for a moment on anything that could have slowed him down, blunted his sharp animal teeth. Jaing hadn’t been afraid of pain, then, but, Kom’rk thought, counting, _then_ was long past. Had it really been seven years? It didn’t feel possible. It felt like the war and the Kaminiise and the fear were so close that Kom’rk could have reached out and touched them, cut the flesh of his body on their sharpness.

“I have to,” Kom’rk said. His hands trembled against the back of Jaing’s neck, and he curled them into fists. “I have to. I have to look out for you.”

Jaing wasn’t so far gone in his softness that he said anything like _you shouldn’t hurt me, then,_ because he still knew that pain was the only way to safety. Always, always, the first lesson Kom’rk could remember.

Instead Jaing said, “I don’t want you to.”

And then Jaing sat up and sighed, pained like he was nursing a broken rib, and he pushed Kom’rk away, back two steps and when Jaing let his hands fall from Kom’rk’s shoulders they weren’t touching at all anymore. “I want you to stop,” Jaing said, halting but going on, still a little ruthless after all. “I’m not that kid anymore, Kom’rk. I’m not sure when it happened or how but I’m not going back, not if there’s anything I can do about it. So you _have_ to stop, okay?”

Jaing reached in, grabbed Kom’rk’s jaw and forced him to look him in the face, breathing harder now.Kom’rk tried to turn away, but Jaing wouldn’t let him, just pushed back against the pressure, held him, bruising. “You have to stop,” Jaing said. He wouldn’t let Kom’rk look away.

Then, somehow, clarity broke through: Jaing wasn’t leaving him. Jaing had already left him behind.

It felt like he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs, like his body was disconnected and shunted outside itself, and he stepped back, mindlessly. Jaing got down from the desk and put his hands on Kom’rk’s shoulders, gripping, but it was too late for the contact to mean anything at all; the touch felt unfamiliar and plastic, like a current trying to complete the circuit and failing, shorting—Jaing drew Kom’rk in and touched their foreheads together, and this time it was Kom’rk who couldn’t catch his breath.

“Please don’t stay like this,” Jaing said, quiet, like he was whispering a secret to Kom’rk in the dead of night across the space between their bunks. But Jaing had never said please, then, none of them had ever heard the word before and wouldn’t have understood it anyway, and Jaing had never been sorry instead of glitteringly, untouchably angry, or terrified, or both—Kom’rk couldn’t remember anymore. “Please let yourself be something else, Kom’rk.”

“It’s not safe,” Kom’rk said, didn’t say, mouthed the words around the air leaving his mouth—

“I know,” Jaing said not quite kind and not quite familiar. “But it’s better, to let it go.”

“You’re going to anyway.” It was a realization that Kom’rk made only as he said the words. There would be no persuading Jaing, no careful manipulation that would make him stay, that could make him come to Kom’rk’s bed that night or the next or the next or on any other after. Jaing, unnoticed, had spent months and years shedding everything that he had been until at last there was only this, his sick debased entanglement with his brother, and Jaing was going to cut that out even if he killed Kom’rk doing it.

“I want you to be alright,” Jaing said. “Promise me you’ll try.”

“I promise,” Kom’rk said, his mouth shaping numbly around the words. He let himself sway into Jaing, embrace him. Jaing put his arms around Kom’rk and lifted his chin up so Kom’rk could press his face into the column of Jaing’s neck, and Kom’rk clung, gripping tight in the back of Jaing’s shirt. Even then Kom’rk couldn’t pretend that nothing had changed. All of Jaing’s body was tense, impatient. Kom’rk curved to him, cleaved to him, and Jaing was unbending and untouchable and lost.

“I think I need to go away for a while,” Kom’rk whispered, “I need to get away from here,” and Jaing hummed, without sympathy, and nodded.

###

End

**Author's Note:**

> all the apologies to andrew bird for using a part of his beautiful song 'orpheo looks back' as the title of this shuddering beast of a work


End file.
